"In the vast plain to the north I have sometimes seen, in the morning sun, the smoke of a thousand villages where no missionary has ever been"

-Robert Moffat
My turn again! MAF pilots rotate being"on call" for medical flights over the weekends and sometimes it works out for passengers to fly along. This past Saturday, it worked out for me! We got the call about 8:45 Saturday morning, a woman who was 5 months pregnant, was having some complications and needed to be transported to Maseru. This is what I have been waiting for, to see the villages and and people who changed Traig's life course. I was finally going to see first hand why we came to Lesotho.

20 minutes later we were in flight. It was amazingly beautiful! I was sitting next to the pilot Christiaan, right were all the action was! The flight time was 40 minutes and I was immediately overcome with the beauty that I saw all around me. The mountains were vast, and every so often I would notice a tiny dot of life-a small village set apart with its tiny round huts, a few men on donkeys. Miles from roads that any car could travel on. Just worn paths from hundreds -- probably thousands -- of horse and donkey journeys.


I knew that the landing strips were barely that and didn't realize where we were landing until we were practically on the ground. We made a pass to make sure there was no livestock or children in the way and then we landed. The village was untouched by time except for our plane sitting on a small patch of grass there among the huts and naked children. The woman we were transporting looked more of a girl to me and did not speak English. She had probably never ventured this far from her home before and it was clear she was very frightened. I did all that I knew to do, I held her hand, smiled and prayed to God for protection for her baby, and peace for her. I do not know what her situation is right now but I know that God is good. My first trip into the mountains of Lesotho left me thinking of all the things that I have that all the mountain people will live their entire lives without. And how terrifying that it must be for them to be facing a disease that is killing 3.5 people every hour in this country.

I found this quote in some of my reading this week and it is my prayer right now so I will end this entry with it. Blessings, Laura

"Let my heart be broken with the things that break God's heart"-Bob Pierce